Australian composers Dorian Le Gallienne, Larry Sitsky, Richard Peter Maddox, Geoffrey Allen and James Penberthy are represented on an entertaining collection of art songs featuring WA soprano Katja Webb and pianist David Wickham. Webb is an emerging talent having already had some success in Vienna and Germany. This is her second album on the English Stone Records label.

Le Gallienne’s austere Shakespeare settings from the 1940s of Fear no more the heat of the sun from Cymbeline and two sonnets are effective and Webb’s full and creamy timbre and excellent diction takes the cold edge off them. Aaron Wyatt’s viola lends a lean minimalist feel to Larry Sitsky’s Seven Zen Songs which blend haikus with Sufi aphorisms and a childish ditty by Christina Rossetti. Dame Mary Gilmour’s ghost tale The Pear Tree gets some chilling treatment from Maddox in his set of four settings of three home-grown poets and a distinctive take on Shakespeare’s Shall I compare thee, which Webb brings to an impressive climax.

Wyatt’s viola returns for two songs by Allen, one of the album’s producers. Wickham’s prowess is well to the fore in English-born composer Paul Paviour’s seven-part setting of Yeats’ Crazy Jane where the strong contrapuntal piano bears witness to Paviour’s background as an organist. Flautist Michael Waye joins for Penberthy’s Pastorals, settings of six poems by Gwen Harwood, to round off the collection.